Travel Notes: My First Travel Blog, 8th November 2009

My Travel Map from travelblog.org as it was the last time I updated the blog

On 8th November 2009, I set up a travel blog using www.travelblog.org. Blogging was still rather new then. Here I will replicate my travel blog entries word for word. This is a much younger version of myself, but it it (was) me, so here it is as it was written on my travel blog.


Michael de Percy in 2009
8th November 2009

My Travel Map does not include Bahrain (it doesn't get a mention in the program) and my visit to China was really only Hong Kong. My visits to US were actually only Hawaii as lay-overs in airports, so these don't really count either! 

The date of this entry is the day before I first travelled overseas at the tender age of 36 (better late than never, I suppose). I flew to Canada (with Air Canada) via Hawaii to conduct the first phase of my PhD fieldwork. 

Since then, travel has fast become a natural part of life. Thank God.

At the time of setting up the Travel Blog, I was on sabbatical. I was learning to dive at Aqaba Adventure Divers in Aqaba, Jordan. I was diving in the mornings and the evenings, and working on my PhD when I wasn't conducting interviews. I also set up my Dive Record (which is not very impressive, and this is incomplete). We completed the PADI Open Water and Advanced Open Water courses. So for someone who lived in Cairns from 1980 until 1992, I had my first dive in the Red Sea!  The Dive Record is below.
Dive Record as at 29 December 2009.
We've been back to Aqaba since and had a refresher dive, but that has been about it for diving. I am surprised that the websites I was using back in 2009 are still working today.

From this point forward, I intend to transfer some of my numerous travel journals to my blog. Reading Rolf Potts' Vagabonding tends to do that to me! I will use the label "Travel Notes" for all travel-related posts.